Philip Norman has long towered above other rock biographers with his definitive studies of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Buddy Holly, and John Lennon - legends whom the world thought it knew, but who came to life as never before through the meticulousness of Norman's research, the sweep of his cultural knowledge, and the brilliance of his writing. Now Norman turns to a rock icon who is the most notorious yet enigmatic of them all.

Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd

This intimate story of Lynyrd Skynyrd tells how a band of lost souls and self-destructive misfits, with uncertain artistic objectives, clawed their way to the top of the rock 'n' roll world. It also offers a greater appreciation for a band whose legacy, in the aftermath of their last plane ride, has since descended into self-caricature.

The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones

Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones’ inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool, in 1969. He lived with them throughout their 1969 American tour, staying up all night together listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway - a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generation’s dreams of peace and freedom.

Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones

Brian Jones is a forensic, thrilling account of Jones' life, which for the first time details his pioneering achievements and messy unraveling. With more than 120 new interviews, Trynka offers countless new revelations and sets straight the tall tales that have long marred Jones' legacy. His story is a gripping battle between creativity and ambition, between self-sabotage and betrayal. It's all here: the girlfriends, the drugs, and some of the greatest music of all time.

Fab: The Intimate Life of Paul McCartney

The living embodiment of the Beatles, a musical juggernaut without parallel, Paul McCartney is undoubtedly the senior figure in pop music today. In this authoritative biography, journalist and acclaimed author Howard Sounes leaves no stone unturned in building the most accurate and extensive profile yet of music's greatest living legend. He is one of the biggest stars that has ever existed, the only key member left from the unquestioned 'biggest band of all time'.

Clapton: The Autobiography

Eric Clapton is far more than a rock star. Like Dylan and McCartney, he is an icon and a living legend. He has sold tens of millions of records, played sell-out concerts all over the world, and been central to the significant musical developments of his era. His guitar playing has seen him hailed as "God". Now, for the first time, Eric tells the story of his personal and professional journeys in this pungent, witty, and painfully honest autobiography.

Life

Now at last Keith Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only to find themselves challenged by authorities everywhere....

Rod: The Autobiography

Rod Stewart was born the working class son of a Scottish plumber in north London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths ranging from gravedigging to professional soccer, it was music that truly captured his heart - and he never looked back. Rod’s is an incredible life, and here - thrillingly and for the first time - he tells the entire thing, leaving no knickers under the bed. A rollicking rock ’n’ roll adventure that is at times deeply moving, this is the remarkable journey of a guy with one hell of a voice - and one hell of a head of hair.

The Soundtrack of My Life

In this star-studded autobiography, Clive Davis shares a personal, candid look into his remarkable life and the last 50 years of popular music as only a true insider can. In the history of popular music, no one looms as large as Clive Davis. His career has spanned more than 40 years, and he has discovered, signed, or worked with a staggering array of artists: Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Dionne Warwick, Carlos Santana, The Grateful Dead, Alicia Keyes, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, and Aretha Franklin, to name a few.

Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

For many, the name Jimi Hendrix conjures up a larger-than-life image of the man who set fire to guitars, women's hearts, and the status quo. In this groundbreaking account, music journalist Charles R. Cross takes a far deeper look. Beyond Hendrix's legendary onstage and offstage magnetism, and his excessive lifestyle, was a man who struggled to accept his role as an idol and privately craved the kind of normal family life he never had.

Bruce

This sweeping biography of Bruce Springsteen features in-depth interviews with family, band members, childhood friends, ex-girlfriends, and a poignant retrospective from the Boss himself. It’s Bruce as his many fans haven’t before seen him - the man behind the myth, describing his life and work in intimate, vivid detail.

De Niro: A Life

In this elegant and compelling biography, best-selling writer Shawn Levy writes of these many De Niros - the characters and the man - seeking to understand the evolution of an actor who once dove deeply into his roles as if to hide his inner nature, and who now seemingly avoids acting challenges, taking roles which make few apparent demands on his overwhelming talent.

On the Road with Janis Joplin

In 1967, as the new sound of rock and roll was taking over popular music, John Byrne Cooke was at the center of it all. As a member of D.A. Pennebaker’s film crew, he witnessed the astonishing breakout performances of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival that June. Less than six months later, he was on a plane to San Francisco, taking a job as road manager for Janis and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. From then on, Cooke was Joplin’s road manager amid a rotating cast of musicians and personnel, a constant presence behind the scenes as the woman called Pearl took the world by storm.

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story

A monumental figure on the American landscape, Jerry Lee Lewis spent his childhood raising hell in Ferriday, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi; galvanized the world with hit records like "Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On" and "Great Balls of Fire", that gave rock and roll its devil’s edge; caused riots and boycotts with his incendiary performances; nearly scuttled his career by marrying his 13-year-old second cousin - his third wife of seven - and ran a decades-long marathon of drugs, drinking, and women.

Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography

In this candid, intimate portrait of a life lived in music, Mick Fleetwood sheds new light on well-known points in his history, including many incredible moments of recording and touring with Fleetwood Mac, as well as personal insights from a man who has been a major player in blues and rock n' roll since his teens.

When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

They were the last great band of the '60s and the first great band of the '70s. They rose, somewhat unpromisingly, from the ashes of the Yardbirds to become one of the biggest-selling rock bands of all time - and eventually paid the price for it, with disaster, drug addiction, and death.

Who I Am

From the voice of a generation: the most highly anticipated autobiography of the year, and the story of a man who wanted The Who to be called The Hair; wanted to be a sculptor, a journalist, a dancer and a graphic designer; became a musician, composer, librettist, fiction writer, literary editor, sailor; drank too much and nearly died; detached from his body in an airplane, on LSD, and nearly died; planned to write his memoir when he was 21; and published this book at 67.

My Cross to Bear

As one of the greatest rock icons of all time, Gregg Allman has lived it all and then some. For almost 50 years, he's been creating some of the most recognizable songs in American rock, but never before has he paused to reflect on the long road he's traveled. Now, he tells the unflinching story of his life, laying bare the unvarnished truth about his wild ride that has spanned across the years.

Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

The son of a classical pianist straight out of the Bronx of old Archie comics, Steven Tyler was born to be a rock star. Weaned on Cole Porter, Nat King Cole, Mick and his beloved Janis Joplin, Tyler began tearing up the streets and the stage as a teenager before finally meeting his "mutant twin" and legendary partner, Joe Perry. In this addictively listenable memoir, Tyler unabashedly recounts the meteoric rise, fall, and rise of Aerosmith over the last three decades and riffs on the music that gives it all meaning.

50 Licks: Myths and Stories from Half a Century of the Rolling Stones

Behold the Rolling Stones: run-ins with the law, chart-topping successes, and now the World's Greatest Continually Operating Rock and Roll Band. 50 Licks tells the story of the Stones, right from its very origins. On July 12, 1962, London's Marquee Club debuted a new act, a blues-inflected rock band named after a Muddy Waters song-the Rolling Stones. They were a hard-edged band with a flair for the dramatic, styling themselves as the devil's answer to the sainted Beatles.

Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy from Brooklyn Got Mixed Up with the Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell About It)

Bill German was a fairly normal teenager growing up in Brooklyn - frustrated at girls, frustrated at school, but mostly frustrated at the poor reporting in magazines and on the radio of his favorite band, The Rolling Stones. So, on his sixteenth birthday, dressed in his pajamas, he set out to, well, set the record straight on Mick, Keith, Ron, and Charlie. Beggars Banquet started as a simple fanzine, but as luck would have it, the band was living only a subway ride away. You want to hang with the Stones? Be careful what you wish for....

Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury

As lead vocalist for the iconic rock band Queen, Freddie Mercury's unmatched skills as a songwriter and his flamboyant showmanship made him a superstar and Queen a household name. But despite his worldwide fame, few people ever really glimpsed the man behind the glittering facade. Now, more than 20 years after his death, those closest to Mercury are finally opening up about this pivotal figure in rock 'n' roll. Based on more than a hundred interviews with key figures in his life, Mercury offers the definitive account of one man's legendary life in the spotlight and behind the scenes.

Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits With the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, the Faces…

Born just outside London in 1942, Glyn Johns was 16 years old at the dawn of rock and roll. His big break as a producer came on the Steve Miller Band's debut album, Children of the Future. He went on to engineer or produce iconic albums for the best in the business, including Abbey Road with the Beatles. Even more impressive, Johns was perhaps the only person on a given day in the studio who was entirely sober, and so he is one of the most reliable and clear-eyed insiders to tell these stories today.

Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

From Graham Nash - the legendary musician and founding member of the iconic bands Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Hollies - comes a candid and riveting autobiography that belongs on the reading list of every classic rock fan.

Publisher's Summary

A supreme achiever to whom his colossal achievements seem to mean nothing....

A supreme extrovert who prefers discretion.....

A supreme egotist who dislikes talking about himself....

Philip Norman has long towered above other rock biographers with his definitive studies of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Buddy Holly, and John Lennon - legends whom the world thought it knew, but who came to life as never before through the meticulousness of Norman's research, the sweep of his cultural knowledge, and the brilliance of his writing.

Now Norman turns to a rock icon who is the most notorious yet enigmatic of them all. Throughout five decades of fronting the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger has been seen as the ultimate arrogant, narcissistic superstar, whose sexual appetite and cavalier treatment of women rival Casanova's and whose supposed reckless drug use touched off the most famous scandal in rock history. Now a grandfather nearing 70 and a British knight of the realm, he still creates excitement at the mere mention of his name; still remains the model for every young rock singer who ever takes the stage.

Norman shows Jagger to be a character far more complex than the cold archseducer of myth: human, vulnerable, often impressive, sometimes endearing. Here at last is the real story of how the Stones' brilliant first manager, Andrew Oldham, transformed a shy economics student named Mike Jagger into a modern Antichrist...of Jagger's vicious show trial and imprisonment on minuscule drug charges in 1967...his remarkable feat at the Stones' Hyde Park concert in making a quarter of a million people keep quiet and listen to poetry...his unpublicized heroic role at the Altamont festival that brought the sunny sixties to a horrific end...the cavalcade of beautiful women from Chrissie Shrimpton to Jerry Hall, whom he has bedded but not always dominated... the enduring but ever-fraught partnership with his "Glimmer Twin", Keith Richards.

While playful about some aspects of Sir Mick, Norman gives him long overdue credit as a songwriter, whose "Sympathy for the Devil" is one of the few truly epic pop singles, and as a harmonica player fit to rank among the great blues masters who inspired the Stones before money became their raison d'etre.

Mick Jagger, above all, explores the keen and calculating intelligence that has kept the Stones on their plinth as "the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band" for half a century.

First off, the narrator is one of the worst I've ever heard. His accent is maddening; he sounds like a robotic Robin Leach. He often mispronounces words and names, sometimes pronouncing them differently from one instance to the next.

Despite being a longtime fan of the Rolling Stones’ music, I have never had a high opinion of them as men. Jagger’s treatment of women, business partners, colleagues, and supposed friends will not impress anyone with any moral standards. Philip Norman seems overeager to give Jagger credit for the instances when he is NOT contemptible, as for the fact that all of Jagger’s children seem to be genuinely fond of him. In the absence of cooperation and input from Jagger himself, Norman surmises too much: “This was the most horrible experience of Jagger’s life, no matter what he may say himself (paraphrased).” Norman repeatedly refers to the Redlands drug bust as the most “terrifying” time of Jagger’s life, despite showing no evidence that Jagger considered it terrifying. Norman repeatedly refers to the Stones with ludicrous superlatives. Everything they have gone through is either the worst or the best or the most or the least that any rock band has ever gone through, with the occasional exception of the Beatles. Such declarations might have been less ridiculous in 1972, but 40 years later, there have been a huge number of bands and celebrities, and it’s doubtful that the Stones’ experiences always qualify as the most extreme.

Norman is obsessed with Jagger’s lips and mouth to an annoying, disturbing, almost fetishistic degree. It is the mouth that Jagger was born with, after all, before the days of surgically inflated clown lips. Norman is also fixated on Jagger’s “girlish,” flat midriff.

Norman’s attempts at humor are puerile and irritating. His tone alternates between sniggering envy and smug condescension. I expected a more mature perspective in the year 2012, but the book reminds me of those written 30 years ago by rock “journalists” who obviously just worshipped the Stones. Norman’s writing about the Stones’ music and Jagger’s vocals in particular are uninteresting and absolutely excruciating to listen to as the narrator attempts to enunciate Norman’s apparently phonetic writing of Jagger’s drawn out, fake Cockney and blues accents. This narrator, while bad enough already, is nearly unbearable when reading or “performing” Jagger himself.

One of the worst aspects of this book is that Norman often repeats details and opinions. You get the impression that it’s unintentional and that the book was written in fits and starts. He just doesn’t remember that he already mentioned that. He mentions blues legend’s Robert Johnson’s infamous “pact with the devil” no less than 3 times. He repeatedly compares Jagger’s now aged countenance to the faces on Mount Rushmore. (Personally, I don’t see the comparison, as Jagger lacks both the dignity and historic significance of those personages.) Norman seems to feel the need to find things to refer to as “the new rock ‘n’ roll”: early in the book, comedy is the new rock ‘n’ roll. Towards the end, modeling is the new rock ‘n’ roll. Why this is relevant, I have no idea. He also contradicts his own assertions: he states that Bianca and Mick Jagger did not look alike, then later says that when she cut her hair short, she looked “exactly” like Mick. Where was the editor on this book?

Norman’s smarmy tone, irrelevant personal opinions, lack of insight, and uneven writing style make this is a poor biography. The atrocious narrator make it a nearly unendurable audiobook. I was completely sick of the narrator, the author, and the subject by the end and was glad when I finished it.

I became a born-again Stones fan after listening to Keith's 'Life". I was interested in reading Mick's autobiography, but I doubt if he ever will write one, and I wouldn't believe a word of it anyway.

I read all the reviews for the many Jagger bios, and this one got either horrible reviews or great ones.

I think the folks who gave it a horrible review were looking for a sensational sex and drugs scandalous book. This book is serious, slow paced, very well-written and carefully researched. The author has an excellent command of language and the narrator has a droll way of delivering the text.

It's just what i was looking for - not garbage, but a real attempt to write a quality book about this very interesting and complicated character

I didn't even make it through 1/3 of this one. I think I bailed during the Marianne Faithful era. I prefer less oooohhhing and ahhhhing in biographies. There were too many opinions and not enough facts. I was disappointed.

It was just one long (24 hr) listing of where they performed, who was there, etc. You learn where he lived and when he moved and who was there. Truly gripping reading. If name-dropping becomes an Olympic sport ... here's a gold medal.

Would you ever listen to anything by Philip Norman again?

NO

What three words best describe James Langton’s performance?

Average

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I found none.

Any additional comments?

Do not waste your money if you think you are going to get an inside look at Mick. According to this, he was a wonderful guy, good father, generous philanthropist ... please ... spare me.I always read a book in its entirety but I could not WAIT for this thing to be over - pure torture.

Some real insights into who Mick Jagger really is ... his psychological make-up ... as opposed to just a rehashing of the historical events in the Stones formative years.

Has Mick Jagger turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

What didn’t you like about James Langton’s performance?

His posh accent, his tone, and his lack of humor were really grating. He sounds exactly like the stiff British aristocrats to whom the Stones were the antithesis. And worst of all are the moments when he reads out the lyrics in a Stones song or pretends to be Jagger talking. It just hurts the ears.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Yes, there were some interesting tidbits about Jagger and the Stones. But God only knows if they were true or not.

Any additional comments?

The ceaseless references to the "Mars bar" legend are ridiculous. This is Norman's fault, not Langton's, and only reveals the psychological hang-ups of Norman, not Jagger or anyone else.

I bought this because it was about, well Mick Jagger. Enough said. It turns out that Mick is smarter than I thought and about as narcissistic as I thought. Is he happy? Beats me but he is a survivor and very rich.

I rolled the dice and I was pleasantly surprised by this book. After attempting to read “Life” purportedly written by Keith Richards, I had given up on Stones books. “Life”, in my opinion, was more-or-less the ravings of a person hoping to rewrite history. Philip Norman presents Mick Jagger in a documentary style; neither extoling nor degrading this icon of music history. The reader was mediocre at best. If you like those big lips and scrawny body, you will like this book.If you found this review helpful, please let me know. Cheers!

Have you listened to any of James Langton’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. But this title is too long for that, of course.

Any additional comments?

Reading the dreadful negative reviews adjoining this audiobook, I can only wonder if the readers in question were listening to the same book that I have been hearing this week. The perception that this is a poor offering is entirely erroneous in my view. Just wrong! My take is quite different. The writing alone is simply incredible- witty, highly informative, and brimming with original and inventive use of the English language. The reader / performer of the audiobook itself takes the wit of the text to a higher level still: in all it is a fabulous reading, rich with obvious love of language, and wickedly, often uproariously funny. I find myself laughing out loud several times during each hour of listening. The story is utterly compelling, with a scope of personalities and events that reach far beyond the details of Mr. Jagger's own journey. You'll get a wide lens view of cultural life in England. The book is every bit as good as Keith Richards' autobiography ("Life") audiobook. I am going to turn to Pete Townshend's new autobiography after I finish "Mick Jagger"- but the Jagger opus is going to be one hard act to follow. I haven't had this much fun with an audiobook in a long time, maybe never. Both the writing and the vocal delivery- absolutely masterful. Engage!

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